


they want to be tender and merciful

by nereid



Series: Writer's Month August 2019 Prompt Challenge [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 00:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20164813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: For writer's month, prompt 5 - sound.She touches the boys' knuckles. When she says she is an explorer, she does not mean just tall mountains and local wildlife and savannas.





	they want to be tender and merciful

Again, the quiet. It's not disturbing, not truly. One of her boyfriend's almost nourished a habit of dying and coming back again. That was disturbing. This is just different. She's never lived under the same roof with so few people, and it shows. Also, zero of her boyfriends are psychic. She's also never lived with non-psychics before. Or men. All of this is to say - it's a lot to get used to. Mornings are the most different. Before her boys, she has slept alone in her bed. Of course, there were some nights, when she was still a kid way more than she is a kid at this ripe age of nineteen, she would climb into Maura's bed, and Maura would talk to her until she fell asleep. But those were different times, yes.

Blue cannot sleep. Blue stirs and turns and twists. Covers and uncovers again, stretches her arms and curls her fingers. She needs another pillow, maybe. She moves to leave the bed, and someone stirs beside her. Henry blinks twice, slowly.

"Can't sleep?" So direct, her boy, sharpened to a point but the point is always tender. His shoulders, she wants to touch them. She hears his breathing, and it hitches when she touches his collarbone, no one even hears the second boy stir.

"You alright?" So polite, her other boy, tender until the point of breaking.

She touches the boys' knuckles. When she says she is an explorer, she does not mean just tall mountains and local wildlife and savannas. She means a life in a house that is quiet at night, where no one can read her thoughts, but everyone can listen to the soft sounds of her words and the loud demand of her touch, and where she learns how her boys like to be touched in return.

In this house, also, someone tells her stories when she can't fall asleep, only sometimes her boys tell stories with their hands, and sometimes with her minds, and sometimes no one tells stories, but there are hands spread out with blueberry yogurt, narrating comfort and promises.

When her boys ask her "Where do we go next?" she always answers "Together".


End file.
